swensont wrote:The computer language you want to use is usually related to the computer language that you know.<>
While I never became proficient in any computer language, S*BASIC is the one I know best - by choice.
But I did try a bunch of others over the years. I guess the instruction set of the HP calculator, HP41CX,
does not count as a real language, but I knew it pretty well, before the QL came into my life.
Then I learnt SuperBASIC, which was ok, but prior to SuperCharge and all that, it felt rather limiting. So
I studied Forth, which for me was a natural successor to the HP41's way of doing things. (Reverse
Polish Notation held no terrors for me in those days!) But after writing a few bad games, I abandoned
(Computer One's?) Forth due to its - and my - limitations at the time. I then tried BCPL <shudder> and
Prospero Pascal (much too weighty for a 8MHz, 512k machine, to my mind).
Once Id mastered the basics of assembler and QDOS, specifically to augment SuperBASIC's vocabulary,
and with the mighty Turbo arriving on the scene, I felt Id found my métier. (This crumbled again when
we got the Pointer Environment, as Turbo couldnt cope with it then, so Q_Liberator became the
compiler of choice, and still is.)
With that power-combination, it seemed pointless to learn C(68), which was still struggling to fit into
the QL environment. When I got my first Atari ST, C seemed the obvious choice. However, I didnt get
on with the ST paradigm at all, and so fled back to the comfort of the evolving QL emulator
environment. This is where the real bleeding edge of QL development was happening, with the full
backing of the genius and hard work of Tony, and the technical and commercial nous of Jochen.
Since then Ive worked with PHP + databases, and javascript, which on the surface are very C-like. But
by now its not only about the language, you have this whole virtual environment to learn and relate to.
And that seems too much like hard work to me! I pity those who have to start from scratch today. You
need to be a special kind of nerd to be self-taught now.
Mind you, its not all bad. While I was learning PHP on the job, I spent half a morning writing a
quicksort routine. A young kid, straight out of college came over to me to ask what I was doing. I told
him, and thinking I was doing him a favour by asking his advice, I said: "How would you do it?"
"Easy," quoth he, "I just type 'sort'."